Sadia’s Blog

A week or so ago a dear friend who was testing out the Myths and Dragons first design set emailed me letting me know that she had used the dragon with designs from the Farsi collection. I was immediately intrigued and couldn’t wait to call and find out what exactly she had done. To make a long story short, she had stitched out the dragon on one side of the chair cover and Farsi flowers on the other side therefore making it versatile. The thought kept with me for some days and I kept imagining the dragon with Farsi flowers but could not justify something like a dragon with flowers until I started discussing it with dh. In the course of our conversation he happened to ask me a simple question. What comes into your mind when you think of dragons? Mythical creatures of course, I said. And the minute I said the words, I knew what I wanted.

Dragons are magical, mythical creatures. As the series “Myths and Dragons” is based upon mythologies from all over the world, why couldn’t I use the dragon in a scene depicting a play upon a myth. Various scenarios ran through my head and I finally settled upon Queen Guinevere. Guinevere in my opinion is an extremely misunderstood woman. Every woman has a secret garden, a secret place where she finds comfort and solace. Guinevere therefore became my myth and the dragon became her secret in the garden amongst the beauty of flowers…hence “Guinevere’s Dragon-behind the garden wall (referring to her time of imprisonment and final solace in death).

The project started with figuring out whether I wanted the dragon as it was originally created by me in the blueprints or whether I wanted to give him a bit of a twist. Doing things outside the box have always intrigued me so I played with the parts of the designs until I could see an amazing transformation. It was almost as if my thoughts of Guinevere and her dragon behind the garden wall had mystically appeared on my screen. The whole design looked absolutely amazing. After three hours the first stitch out gave a totally different look from the original design (see multi-hooping, creating large embroideries blog) and I can’t wait to finish the whole design. So far the design is about 19″x12″ but the completed design in my head is more like 25″/26″ tall, a good size for a bell pull.

I chose Silk Dupioni as my fabric. Usually I always treat the silk with Totally stable but as this is going to be a bell pull (maybe quilted or not, not sure yet) I really didn’t see the need for taking precautions and used a medium weight tear away. With over 190000 stitches so far, the design really has held up well. Part of that is due to the placement of the objects in the design. Even though many objects overlap or stitch partly on top of other objects, yet their  placement takes away that nagging hole areas that are great places for warpness of the fabric therefore creating an absolute gaudy wave which will never go away no matter how hard to steam press or iron. The other main worry was the color of the silk. Black is great and I love the color but when using it to embroider one must be extremely careful as it will show the tiniest bit of flaw tenfolds.Colors of the threads was another important issue. I wanted the dragon to be behind all the flowers which were appliqued using batiks and mottled fabrics but I wanted the coloring of the dragon to blend in with the flowers. The clouds were another thing to consider, should I use them or not. Reasoning gave me an affirmative answer as the whole design is meant to be a myth and therefore unreal. A dragon would not be on the ground, rather tall and almost in the skies. The flowers I chose from the Farsi I and Farsi II collections were deliberately the ones that did not look like real flowers and their growth of course came from Jack and the beanstalk, LOL.

Ofcourse I knew dh’s first question was going to be “why does Guinevere need a dragon”. As the garden is the sacred place for solace and comfort the dragon becomes her guardian and protector of dreams and wishes….Okay I’ve not gone totally gaga…LOL. But interesting concept though. I’m in the stages of stitching out the bottom half of the design and will post the final picture hopefully soon. Yes, dh is shaking his head…